Billing for your mobile and electronics shop in Jammu and Kashmir
The repair that waits for a part, the power bank that sells out in the cut, and the day's total at closing.
Why a Kashmir phone shop meets the January cold with dead batteries, dark lanes and the wrong drawer of phones
The cold that kills batteries, and a queue in January
When the frost is hard, phone batteries drain faster and die sooner, and the shop fills with people asking for a new one. Each battery fits one model and not another. You have a drawer of them and a customer waiting, and you search by hand for the one that fits, hoping it was not the last. By the time you find it, two more people have joined the queue and the first one has gone to the next lane.
The power cut that empties the shelf of power banks
When the winter cuts begin, power banks, chargers, LED lights and small inverters sell out in a few evenings. You see a bare hook on the wall and cannot say how many went the first night and how many the third. The wholesaler is in another city, and the road decides how fast he can reply. When the first night's rush is over, there are empty hooks and a list of customers who wanted the one you did not have.
The drawer of cheap phones and the shelf of dear ones
Customers ask for the cheaper phones more than the costly ones, and the shelf of costly ones sits still while the drawer of cheap ones empties. The two are mixed in one notebook, and you cannot tell by looking which stock is moving and which is only taking up space. When the month ends you pay the wholesaler for both, and the cheaper ones are the ones that paid for the dear ones to sit.
From the battery counted before January to the day's total split three ways
Batteries counted by model before the frost
Keep each battery as an item named for its phone, with its own count. In the autumn, look at which are lowest, and order those before January. When a customer comes in the cold, you know in a second whether the battery is in the drawer. A customer who comes in on a cold January morning does not wait for you to search.
The day's total split three ways
Today's sales show phones, repairs and small parts as separate lines at closing. After a few weeks you see which of the three keeps the shop going in a slow month, and which only looks busy because of the queue.
The cheap drawer and the dear shelf counted apart
Keep the cheaper phones and the costly ones as separate items with separate counts. A phone sold from the drawer takes one off the drawer, and the dear shelf is untouched, so a week later you know which stock is moving and which is not. The dear shelf is then judged on what it really sells, not on how it looks in the glass.
The lanes and towns where Kashmir buys its phones and lights
Phones, lights and chargers are sold in the lanes of towns across Jammu and Kashmir, such as these.
- Lal Chowk is Srinagar's central commercial area for textiles, handicrafts and souvenirs; Polo View Market is known for handicrafts and carpets.
- Jammu city's Narwal fruit and vegetable mandi was upgraded between 2021 and 2023 with improved sheds, a Mandi Plaza building and a 100-tonne weighbridge.
- Agriculture is central to Anantnag district's economy: in 2019-20, 64.56% of the reporting area was under agriculture.
- Most people in Kupwara depend on agriculture and horticulture, and walnuts are a major product and business of the district.
Tools for a shop with a repair bench, a cable wall and a box of spare screens
Low stock warnings
A warning on the batteries that fit the most popular phones, a few weeks before the first hard frost.
Godown stock
The box of spare screens and batteries kept as its own stock beside the counter, so a repair is not promised without the part.
Daily reports
The months when the internet was cut set beside the ordinary months, day by day, so a slow stretch is seen as a stretch and not as a mystery.
Questions Kashmir mobile and electronics shops ask
The same phone model came in two years and its battery is not the same. How do I name them?
Put the year or the size in the item's name beside the model, so the two batteries are two items with their own counts. The warning then names the one that is low.
Phones come from the wholesaler in boxes of ten. Can I count the box as ten phones?
Yes. Put the number of phones in when the box arrives. Each sale takes one off, so the count is always the number of phones that are really in the drawer or on the shelf.
One spare screen fits two models. Do I count it once or twice?
Count it once, as one item, and name it for both models, like screen, model A and model B. A repair for either model takes one off the same count.
When the internet went and the phones that people bought changed
Months of internet shutdown cut high-end smartphone sales in the Kashmir Valley by 80 per cent in early 2020, Outlook reported. A shop that sells phones sees how much of its trade depends on things outside the counter, and how quickly a month's stock can stop moving.
In Kashmir, buyers moved to low-end I-Tell phones costing between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,800 when internet access was restricted, a Srinagar phone-shop owner said. When the buying moves to the cheaper phones, the stock a shop holds in the costlier ones is the part that is slow to sell, and the part that ties up the most money.